Associated Press
NEW YORK – In a ceremony mixed with tears and overflowing with pride Tuesday, the 23 New York police officers killed during the Sept. 11 terrorist attack were given the department’s highest award.
“I have not lost a son; I’ve gained 3,000 of them,” William Weaver, the father of Officer Walter Weaver, 30, said after the ceremony as dozens of officers approached him to shake his hand.
Six other police officers, all living, also received the medal of honor. The medals were handed out by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik to the victims’ families.
Tears flowed freely in the audience filled with blue uniforms as the families – children, widows, parents, brothers and sisters – stepped solemnly across the famed stage to accept the star-shaped gold medal of honor.
The officers killed on Sept. 11 were a patchwork of the department’s finest police officers, most of them assigned to the elite Emergency Service Unit.
Among them was Sgt. Michael Curtin, 45, who had gone to Oklahoma City in 1995 to help dig for victims in the rubble of the bombed federal building.
On Sept. 11, Officer Moira Smith, 38, of Manhattan’s 13th Precinct, could be heard over a police scanner helping an asthma victim and directing people out of one of the twin towers. Her husband, Officer James Smith, has been at ground zero constantly hoping his wife’s body will be recovered.
And then there was Officer John Perry, 38, who had gone to police headquarters to sign retirement papers the morning of Sept. 11. Perry, an attorney, had been ready to join a law firm. But as word of the attacks spread, Perry, who was assigned to the 40th Precinct in the Bronx, joined his colleagues.
Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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